Sophie White: My hobbies may have become mildly toxic obsessions — but I had to replace my alcohol addiction with something

Hobbies are supposedly benign things that I always seem to take too far. Perhaps this is you too? I’m incapable of engaging in any activity on a nice, casual level. Everything becomes an obsession.

For me, hobbies are — to paraphrase American novelist David Foster Wallace — seemingly fun things that I WILL do again, over and over until it has consumed my entire life and everyone around me is threatening to set themselves on fire if I say one more word about it. Sometimes I think that I am the living, breathing, walking embodiment of the phrase “This is why we can’t have nice things”. I will always take a nice thing too far.



For starters, I’m an alcoholic so there’s that! One drink is too many and a thousand’s not enough. Before I got sober in April 2018, I didn’t actually have any hobbies except for drinking which, as hobbies go, is extremely boring and has a tendency to ruin your life if it is your sole form of “self-care” (as I viewed it). Addiction’s a buzz-wreck.

Even if you take away the physical ramifications, emotional fallout and psychic anguish, addiction is an admin nightmare..